


sweet dreams are made of these

by Tobiko



Series: Welters 2018 [2]
Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Past Rape/Non-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-02
Updated: 2018-05-02
Packaged: 2019-05-01 00:05:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14508126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tobiko/pseuds/Tobiko
Summary: The night after they retrieve the Unity Key all the Questers are thrown into each other's dreams.





	sweet dreams are made of these

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warning for mentions and depictions of Julia's assault.

Alice knew immediately this nightmare wasn’t hers.

She’d always been a fairly active dreamer and her dreams never necessarily had rhyme or reason, but this just FELT off. Different.

Magic.

She was in all white surrounded by mostly people she didn’t know and Kady. The faces of the strangers flickered every so often into Quentin, an older woman with curly hair, a tall handsome college aged man, and a red headed woman with brilliant blue eyes. She was chanting something and the words felt wrong, felt like something she should stop herself from saying.

Then a monster was among them and tearing them apart.

She screamed as they fell one by one and she slipped in the blood of the redhead, who was reaching out to her, glaring at her in accusation. Kady hid under a table and Alice scrambled away from the monster. She got a good look at his face.

 She remembered him. Reynard the Fox. He had almost killed Quentin when she was trapped inside him as a Niffin.

This was Julia’s nightmare.

The implications jumped into her head even as she tried to get away. She was having Julia’s nightmare, probably as some residual effects of the Unity Key. There was probably cross contamination happening all over tonight. Did that mean someone had her nightmare?

Reynard pounced.

She was face down in blood and Reynard was pinning her. Alice tried to calm down, remind herself it was just a nightmare. But the fear was real, adrenaline flowing in her brain. Telling herself to calm down didn’t help.

Julia was standing over them. Or, well, another Julia, because even though she was very much Alice if she looked at her hands she saw tattoos and dark nail polish. This new Julia stared down at her impassively, then smiled.

Other Julia, definitely Shadeless Julia, set alight the corpses around her just as pain ripped through Alice. It was muted, a shadow of reality, but it was still unpleasant. She grit her teeth. She was not being raped, this was a dream.

Poor Julia. Was this every night?

Alice could compartmentalize better than just about anybody she knew. This was still fucking awful.

“Julia,” she said shakily to the Shadeless Julia, and her voice came out in an unfamiliar rasp. “You can help me.”

“This has already happened,” Shadeless Julia said with a shrug. “You know that. We can’t change it.”

Alice balled her hands into fists. No, this was unacceptable. “This… isn’t fair!” She said, and suddenly the edges of the dream wavered, things felt less real. Shadeless Julia quirked an eyebrow.

This is fake. I can stop it.

“Enough!”

Reynard and the bodies vanished. Alice stood shakily, glaring at the other Julia. “She doesn’t deserve this.”

“… you aren’t her, are you?” Shadeless Julia asked, smiling a little. “She would never say that.”

“No, I’m not her. This is ridiculous. She shouldn’t be plagued by this shit. I get it, trauma doesn’t have reason, but she’s more than made up for any mistakes she’s made AND there is so much that isn’t even her fault!” Alice ranted.

She didn’t know Julia well. The strongest feeling she’d ever had toward the girl was jealousy, over her relationship with Q and later her having magic. But Julia had offered her magic up to Alice without hesitation, and had taken it back to save Alice’s life even when she was being a bitch about it.

“Let her have some peace. She needs it.”

Shadeless Julia chuckled a little. “It’s not up to me. She might hear you, though.”

And she vanished.

When Alice woke, she decided to do some research on rape trauma and dreams.

.

Penny was intimately familiar with dreams. But he didn’t dream in the Underworld, so when he found himself in one he knew something was off.

And that was definitely him dead on a bed, again. He groaned. “The fuck is this, now?”

It wasn’t his voice that left his lips.

“Kady?” He looked down. “Oh fuck.” This was Kady’s dream. Or rather, nightmare.

“Look what you’ve done, you stupid slut.” He looked to the side of the bed and scowled. Reynard the Fox was standing on the side, blood on his hands and lips. “You killed him.”

“Um, no, she fucking didn’t,” Penny snapped. “I died of magic radiation cancer.”

Reynard frowned. “He was poisoned to help you. He died because you couldn’t save him.”

“Fuck off.”

The dream wavered around the edges and then shifted. His dead body was now on the floor, in white. His throat was slashed. He was under a table and Julia and Reynard were standing. Julia turned to look at him, glaring. “You abandoned me. You’re a coward.”

Penny crawled his way out from under the table and stood up, towering over the dream Julia. “Julia may be a fucked up psycho bitch, but she wouldn’t say that to Kady. She loves Kady and she doesn’t blame her for any of this.”

Reynard and Julia’s faces flickered, blurred.

The dream tried again, shifting.

John Gains, clearly dead, stood in front of him. “You killed me.”

“No, YOU killed you,” Penny argued. “You used her. She’s gotta carry that guilt now, and fuck you for doing that to her!”

The dream seemed to be short circuiting. He’d never been in a dream that was falling apart at the seams. He folded his arms. He was not letting this dream get to him. It was a bunch of lies.

“This isn’t how this goes,” a voice said behind him. Reynard was back, as was Julia. He was even there now, pale with death. They were all glaring at him. “This is her dream, not yours.”

“Well it’s fucking wrong,” Penny said. “Reynard is gone, Julia is okay, Gains made his choices, and so did I. Kady is amazing and tried her best to help. She’s a fucking fighter, and you don’t get to tear her down.”

One by one, they blinked out.

Penny blinked back to the library, where he’d slumped over his cart. He sighed. Fucking magic.

.

Margo recognized this scene. The battle with the Beast at the Wellspring. She’d been there, but not at this angle. She was on the ground and her shoulder hurt. When she looked at it she saw her arm had nearly been cut clean off.

“Oh shit I’m Q.”

She struggled to her feet just as Alice burst into magical flame. She flinched away from the screams. They had haunted her for weeks after. “Not again.”

And then suddenly there she was, and there was Eliot and Julia, which definitely wasn’t right because she hadn’t been there.

Niffin Alice showed up and started to force choke each one of them.

“Hold up, this didn’t fucking happen.”

“Save us, Q! Fucking save us!” The dream version of her shrieked. Julia was lifted off the ground, her short little legs kicking. Eliot started bleeding from the nose.

“Yes, save them, Quentin, why don’t you,” Niffin Alice said with a giggle.

“Ugh, fucking STOP,” Margo groused. The scene froze. She shook her arm and the wound stopped hurt. She marched forward but the dream changed and she was standing in pajamas in some sort of hospital.

“Well this is fun,” Margo grumbled. “Quentin! Come and get me from your sad little dream now!”

“Talking to yourself, are you Quentin?” She turned and Penny was smirking at her. “And you wonder why you’re in here.”

“I’m in here because of some fucked up magic. I’m really taking a nap on the Muntjac.”

“Nonsense on nonsense.” Another voice. Julia and Alice, laughing at her. She rolled her eyes and turned again to find another her, Kady, Eliot, all of them laughing.

“Q, will you just stop!” The dream flickered.

“I died because of you,” Alice said.

“You abandoned me and I was raped by a trickster god,” Julia said.

“You can’t save anyone.”

“You’re pathetic.”

“You’re nothing.”

“Shut up!” Margo yelled. “Quentin for Christ sake, you’re a King of Fillory. Start thinking like one!”

The dream people stopped talking but they still glared. Margo rolled her eyes. “He’s a depressed little fucker, but has the biggest heart of anybody. He’d give his friends the last drop of magic. He’s grown so fucking much and you can’t take that from him, you assholes. He’s more than this! So you can all go off to your little corners in his head and leave him the fuck alone.”

“It’s not that simple,” dream Eliot said.

The dream flickered and she was standing with just Eliot in the middle of a sand pit, colored tiles surrounding them.

“This is-“ Margo stopped, a hand fluttered to her throat.

“Even here, it wasn’t that simple.”

A little boy ran between them, face obscured.

Eliot’s face started to age, his hair turning white, and Margo bit back a sob. “A life, a good life, and you could never be fully happy. Your broken brain wouldn’t let you. How pathetic can you be?”

“It’s not… his fault,” Margo said, trying to keep her gaze on Eliot’s eyes and not the wrinkles surrounding them.

“I died, you had a kid, grandkids, and what was the point of it all? What was the point if you can’t even be happy?”

“Just STOP!” Margo shrieked, stamping her foot. Eliot just stared at her.

“You two jerks… you abandoned me,” she hissed. “You had a whole life together, without me. What was it for? For magic! For us! Quentin knows this! He knows it, this is just his dumb brain doing its thing. He sacrificed so much for this stupid quest. He’s strong, and he’s smart and he’s too caring for his own fucking good, and this is some bullshit. So stop it, dream Eliot. Stop it, Quentin’s brain. Enough already.”

The dream flickered and faded out.

Margo woke up on the Muntjac and curled into Eliot.

.

Quentin found himself in the corridor to the clean room. The Dean was on the floor, and Mike was standing there covered in blood.

“This isn’t uh- I don’t know what’s happening,” Quentin mumbled, taking a step back.

Without him doing anything, a giant gash opened on Mike’s chest and he fell to his knees. “You killed me, El,” Mike said.

“I’m not- what’s…”

And suddenly, Mike was him, looking up through a curtain of hair. “You killed me, El.”

“Eliot never killed me…” Quentin said. He looked around, still confused, still floundering. “What is happening? This isn’t my memories, this isn’t how any of this goes.” He looked down at himself. “I’m Eliot?”

“You killed me, El,” his doppelganger repeated.

“He did NOT, oh my god,” Quentin replied, running a hand through curly hair. “This is… this has got to be some sort of spell, I just don’t know… how or what or…?”

Mike reset, and then he was dead, and then he was another Quentin.

“You killed me, El.”

“Dammit, stop that!” Quentin shouted. “Look, if this is some sort of loop of his thoughts or his…” he paused, frowning. “…Dreams? Is this a dream?”

Mike was back, Mike was dead. Mike was Quentin, Quentin was Margo, Margo was Fen with a belly swelling with Eliot’s unborn kid.

“You killed me, El.”

Quentin shook his head. “Okay, okay this is a dream. I’ve done this before. Didn’t go so well, but maybe this time…”

He turned away from the body. “That’s not real, and it’s not true. What else do you got?”

The corridor faded into the Fillorian throne room. Margo was alive, face pinched with fury. “Eliot, the castle is breeched, the Lorians and Floaters are here. Your decisions have doomed us. How are we going to survive this?”

“Well, okay, so first off Margo doesn’t talk like that,” Quentin said. “Eliot knows that, so maybe his brain can’t make her sound like herself and say those things? I don’t know, um… El? You haven’t doomed anyone. Fillory is okay, or you know, it will be okay. We’ll get it back. And you haven’t killed anyone. Mike… Mike wasn’t your fault. He was being controlled by Martin and he was doomed before you even met him.”

Margo was still glaring at him but wasn’t saying anything.

“See? Very un-Margo. This isn’t _real_ , El. It’s your brain, your fears. You’re blaming yourself for stuff that isn’t-“

The throne room faded.

He was standing in the middle of the tile pit.

He could see himself playing with little Rupert. His throat tightened. Arielle was hanging laundry.

Dream Quentin turned to Eliot.

“Do you think any of this life with you was real? Do you think it _meant_ anything?”

“What?” Quentin asked weakly, eyes on his son.

“You were the only option, Eliot. Obviously I wouldn’t have spent my life with you in any other circumstance.”

“I didn’t even miss you,” Margo said as she suddenly appeared.

“No one really needs you, farm boy.”

“I need him,” Quentin said. “Margo _needs_ him. Fillory needs him. Eliot is a good king, and he was a good dad, and he will be again if he wants to be. He is smart and loyal and funny, and he fights to be what people need him to be. El, if you can hear me, if any of this gets to you somehow, please know you were not a last resort. I love you, just like you love me. We’re family. I can’t imagine a life without you.”

The dream flickered and Quentin woke.

He hoped he had said the right thing.

.

Kady became aware in some sort of greenhouse.

There were yellow tomatoes hanging on a vine, carrots in a terrarium. She didn’t recognize this place at all. She tried to get out of bed but her movements were slow.

She looked down and her hands were wrinkled.

“The fuck?”

She hobbled over to somewhere she could see her reflection. Her vision as fucked up and she saw a blurry smudged version of an old man.

“…who the fuck is this?”

“We all forgot about you.”

Kady turned. The blonde traveller and the redhead from the library heist were standing there smirking at him.

“…Victoria, right? And…” She stared at the redhead.

“I don’t remember your name.”

This seemed to confuse whatever was happening for a second. It vibrated around the edges, the girls don’t move for a bit.

“No one cares about where you are, Josh, no one will ever come looking,” Victoria finally said.

“Josh? Why the fuck am I Josh?”

There was another glitch. Kady crossed her arms impatiently. “Um, hello?”

“You matter to no one, you will always be forgotten.”

“Okay? I literally do not care.”

“You’ll always be alone.”

“Oh, fuck off Josh,” Kady sneered. “I get it, we fucking get it. You’re a lonely little son of a bitch. So are we all. None of our stupid little questers club belongs anywhere but with each other, which _surprise_ , is fucked up! I don’t give a shit how you feel, Josh. Not many of us do! Get over it. Do something about it! Make us fucking care, if you feel like it. Cuz I sure as shit am not entertaining your pity party for a second longer!”

Her voice wavered and she clenched her fists. “People have fucking died, Josh, and you expect me to prioritize this shit? No. Fuck no. Earn your way. If you want to be one of us, BE one of us. Don’t just set a fucking flag and say that’s enough. You got that?”

Kady woke up, tears on her pillow.

.

Eliot was standing in the throne room, and there was bright blood on his wedding gown.

Margo’s wedding gown. He’d never gotten to see it before now.

A head rolled at his feet.

The Fairy Queen stood next to him, black eyes void of feeling.

“You are alone now, Queen Margo. High King Eliot and all of your children of Earth friends have abandoned you to Fillory. Do your duty.”

Tick smiled at him and it’s not a kind smile. “I hope we won’t have to put you out to dry dock.”

“It happens sometimes, you know,” Rafe said solemnly to Abigail.

“Excuse me, dry dock?”

Everyone just leered at him.

“I feel like I’m missing something, but I have not abandoned Bambi. I would never.”

“They will never respect you. No one will ever love you,” The Fairy Queen said.

“ _I_ love her,” Eliot snapped, starting to get angry.

“You are a cold-hearted, loveless bitch. You don’t deserve-“

“I’m going to stop you right there,” Eliot said, holding up a hand. “Bambi may be ruthless, but she’s not cold-hearted. She gives too much of a shit about things people don’t even think about.”

Eliot turned up his face. “Bambi! I love you, and you are the most wonderful, astounding, powerful woman in all the worlds we’ve ever visited! You are Margo the Destroyer! Never forget! I won’t let you!”

Eliot woke up to Margo curling into him, and Eliot cuddled her back and placed a kiss to her temple.

.

Julia was magic.

She soared through the cosmos, she knew everything, she saw everything.

And then she was torn from her freedom, placed in a body that hurts, that eats and shits and yearns. She’s trapped in a jail of a body, her own mind slipping away from her.

“Alice,” she gasped, closing her eyes.

“This is what she feels, every day.” Julia looked up to see Niffin Alice staring at her. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

“Neither are you.”

Niffin Alice shrugged. “I’m a part of her now. Not different from her, exactly. It’s not like I’m some separate entity talking to you. This is her, me, noticing you’re in my dreams and wondering what you’re doing here.”

“I don’t know, maybe-“

“The Unity Key,” they both said at the same time.

“Makes sense,” Niffin Alice said. “Cross contamination.”

Niffin Alice turned. Writhing little worm creatures had appeared, surrounding them. They all shrieked as they died.

More creatures appeared.

Vampires, demons, another niffin, things that Julia doesn’t know, all screaming and dying, tortured and tormented.

“We did this,” Niffin Alice said, frowning. “We hurt and maimed and killed.”

“…you did this.”

Niffin Alice nodded. “It- plagues her. Us…. me.”

“You don’t know where you end and she begins,” Julia said softly.

“Her, me, we. Am I the monster or the soul that the monster lost? Am I both? Neither?” Niffin Alice raised a hand up, the lights of a dying worm creature danced through her fingertips. “Would I do this all again, given the chance?”

“Alice.” Julia reached out, put her hand on Niffin Alice’s… no, Alice’s shoulder. Alice turned to look at her, eyes bright with self-hatred, fear. “I did terrible things without my Shade. And I was bound to a body. If I had been a Niffin, who knows what I would have done.”

“You didn’t do this.”

“No… I didn’t.”

“There is no forgiveness for me.”

“I don’t know about that,” Julia answered honestly. “I really don’t. But that doesn’t matter, in the end. We want forgiveness. But we may never get it. We may never deserve it. But…” Julia reached out, asking, and Alice gave her a hesitant look but did not protest. Julia wrapped her in a hug.

“We just work. We make up for it, in any ways we can. We live with it, Alice, and we do better.”

Alice shook against Julia, and she wondered if Alice was crying.

When Julia woke, she decided it might be a good idea to make breakfast for everyone.

Alice liked a good pancake.

.

Josh woke up after a few hours of being stuck chained to a book cart and pretending he knew what was going on.


End file.
